1987.10.18 - Hammerjacks, Baltimore, MD, USA

High old times in Baltimore

Slash may be a lifelong Los Angeleno, but he has a fondness for our town. "I love Baltimore,” he declares. “I’m probably one of the few people that actually say that, because Baltimore is not one of those places that the average kid is familiar with if you're not from there. But I've been enough times. It's a cool town.”

Among the things he likes about Baltimore is Hammerjacks, where Guns N' Roses played back before becoming famous. “I remember playing there," he says. “Hammer-jacks is the gig — I don’t know if you should print this or not — but it was the gig where ..."

Well, let's just say that guitarist Izzy Stradlin embarrassed himself in the manager's office before the band went on.
“Me and Izzy got really messed up," Slash says. “When you're touring around in a bus, you get there in the morning, you have a day room at the hotel, you go to the gig way too early... and you get bored.”

So Izzy and Slash got drunk. “I play well when I’m messed up," Slash says. “Izzy, on the other hand ...” He laughs. “So during the gig. he just sat on his amp. But he had a Marshall stack behind him, so he sat on the tiny lip of the bottom cabinet, and we just sorta covered for him.” But, wouldn't sitting on the amp like that make his guitar feed back?

“Oh, I think he was pretty much turned off at that point,” answers Slash, laughing even harder.

— J.D. Considine

Rock and roll

Two years after the club opened, Principio expanded into the warehouse next door and opened the Inner Harbor Concert Hall, and Hammerjacks began booking live music for the first time. That was when the club truly got into the rock and roll business, and the Hammerjacks lifestyle appealed as much to rock bands as it did to rock fans.

“I just enjoy it,” said Brett Michaels of Poison in 1989. “It’s one of those clubs where every time I go there, I just have a really good time. But if I was married or engaged, I’d never go there.... It’s the wrong place to be if you’re married or engaged.”

It was also the wrong place to be if you’d had too much too drink, as Izzy Stradlin of Guns N’ Roses learned one night in 1988. GNR was only just becoming known among hard-rock fans — this was just before their first hit single, “Sweet Child o’ Mine” — when the group got its first headlining show at Hammerjacks.

As was often the case in those days, the band killed time before the show by getting drunk. “Me and Izzy got really [messed] up,” recalled GNR guitarist Slash a couple years ago. “I play well when I’m [messed] up. Izzy, on the other hand...” Being drunk was only the beginning, though. “We were in the office, because the manager wasn’t in there,” says Slash. “And Izzy peed on the floor.”

Needless to say, this did not go over well with the Hammerjacks management. “Actually, I think the security guys threw him out or something,” says Becker. “Of course, nobody knew what the band was going to become at that point, or they’d probably have invited him to urinate on stage!”

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